Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

Winter Trace – blog post

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the abbreviated TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 18th. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for any updates.

• On Tuesday, November 15th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package as previously deployed to the three RC channels in week #45. This includes:
  •  llGetEnv() will support “region_max_prims” (feature request BUG-40825).
  • llGetObjectDetails() will have a new OBJECT_GROUP_TAG function  (feature request BUG-20064) – when pointed at avatars it returns the group tag you see floating above them; and also OBJECT_TEMP_ATTACHED – to tell you if something is a temp attachment (feature request BUG-5195).
• There is was planned RC deployment for Wednesday, November 16th.

No Change Window

A No Change window is in force in week #47 (week commencing Monday 21st November) in the run-up to Thanksgiving in the United States. This means that all four server channels should now remain on the same release through until November 30th, when a new RC deployment is anticipated.

SL Viewer

[00:05] As noted in part 1 of this week’s report, the Maintenance RC viewer version 4.1.2.321518 was promoted to de facto release status on Tuesday, November 15th. Also, and as reported in my Bento update #34, the Bento RC viewer was updated to version 5.0.0.321598. This contains three significant bug fixes, but there will be a further RC release to correct the so-called “Viagra Bug” which causes an “ever-growing groin bone”.

[02:14] Further updates are anticipated on the 360 Snapshot project viewer. The Lab is still trying to work around conflicts with the Interest List, but at the moment it still appears the best solution is to slowly pan around the area you want to photography before attempting a capture to ZIP file, although this doesn’t always take care of things.

64-bit Viewers

[02:58] The 64-bit viewer builds, when they appear, will at some point include revisions to how the viewer goes about checking for updates and how the update process is managed. The aim is to make the update process more robust, and separate out the update checks from the rest of the code. There will be further discussions on this in December, which might be taken to indicate when the first 64-bit versions of the viewer might be appearing.

New Maintenance RC

[03:46] The next Maintenance viewer, containing further fixes and improvements is with QA, but should be appearing soon.

Intel HD2000 – HD4000 Graphics Issue

[58:57] As noted in my week #42 TPVD update, the Lab is going to resolve the Windows version detection issue with Intel HD2000 – HD4000 graphics on 32-bit systems by having the 32-bit version of their Windows viewer not opting into the Win 10 features, allowing 32-bit systems remain compatible with the chipsets; however, the 64-bit version will still opt-in. In addition, as the new viewer update process comes into force, the Lab is going to try to automatically  update users into the correct channels, so they are no longer impacted by these issues.

Grid Status Page and Feed Changes

[04:22] The Lab is making further changes to how grid status information is displayed / delivered. This involves a move to a new status page provider, in part to provide more information over what was previously possible and to improve updates and management of grid status reports and  updates.

The new grid status pages will be delivered via https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/. Note that this isn’t actually live as yet, and any information displayed on the page is currently for testing purposes only.

The cut-over date for the new service is currently planned for Monday, November 28th, at which point a redirect will be put in place to steering people to the new status page when following dashboard links, etc. There may also be a redirect on the RSS feed URL as well. However, those wishing to use the new RSS feeds may need to manually update to one of the following URLs:

• https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/history.atom
• https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/history.rss

The changes are intended to allow Lab Operations to update grid status information directly from their internal chat system, rather than go through multiple steps to get the status pages updated, which is hoped will make the status information reflect updates and situations in a more timely manner, as well as the page itself having far more information available to users through the drop-down sections. There may also be a SMS feature so that those wishing to can subscribe to the service and receive grid status updates on the smartphone.

llTakeControl Issue

[10:18-36:22] Recent changes to the llTakeControl function, which among other things, manages interactions when in Mouselook have resulted in some users running TPVs being unable to complete Quest 3 of the new Horizons Experience as the guns for that section of the game will not function.

I’ve provided a separate report on the issue as it relates to TPVs and the Horizons Experience. However, the problem is symptomatic of wider issues with llTakeControl which also for a part of this discussion, and I refer readers the video to hear the entire conversation.

Voice Updates

[43:58]  The current voice updates are progressing through LL’s QA, but has been delayed due  voice attenuation with distance and direction issues occurring on Mac systems such that anyone on the left of a listening person attenuate rapidly with distance so that at a distance of less than 10 metres, they can no longer be heard. This requires further work from Vivox to correct. Once received – which shouldn’t be too long – then the updates will be released in a project or RC viewer.

Meanwhile, the server-side Voice updates have been held pending the completion of other server-side work which is deemed to have a higher priority.

[42:36] While a fix for SL Voice crashing when plugging / unplugging a USB device was broadly fixed some time again, there are some USB devices which can still result in a Voice crash when plugged in / unplugged from a computer. These seem to be devices which aren’t correctly recognised at the time they are connected (e.g. a headset being identified as a keyboard or camera, a camera as a headset, etc.). Vivox apparently now has a fix for this issue as well which will be coming shortly.

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the abbreviated TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 4th. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

• On Tuesday, November 1st, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package as deployed to the three RC channels in week #43. This comprises: a fix for the bug introduced in week #42 – see BUG-40735 “Paying an object with [slgaming] in the object name (most skill game machines) fails on the RC 16.10.14.320687”; two fixes for issues with the new llSit function for Experiences, and additional internal updates.
• There was no RC channel deployment on Wednesday, November 2nd. However all three channels were restarted.

Both the Main channel deployment and the RC channel restarts saw land capacity / prim allowances for Mainland regions increase.A full Mainland region now has a land capacity / prim allowance of 22,500 as standard. Note that private estate regions will follow in due course.

For the specifics of these changes, please refer to Lab reveals LI / prim allowance changes in Second Life – in full.

SL Viewer

The Project Bento RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.321250 on Wednesday, November 2nd. offering the following fixes (the reports on the JIRA are non-public, so links aren’t included here to save confusion):

• SL-395 – joint scale locks failing to upload in some cases.
• MAINT-6853 – viewer crash when checking preview skin weights in mesh upload.
• SL-504 – intermittent crash when adding attachment to an avatar (probably during shutdown).

This viewer is expected to go through at least one more iteration to address further bugs.

The Lab hopes that either the Bento RC or the current Maintenance RC (version 4.1.2.321183 at the time of writing) will be promoted to the de facto release viewer prior to US Thanksgiving, with the other being promoted shortly thereafter.

A further Maintenance RC is in development, and is likely to appear once the current RC has been promoted.

64-bit Viewer Progress

The Lab has completed building all of the required libraries for the 64-bit viewer, and are now actually building the first 64-bit project viewers, which it is hoped will see the light of day before the end of the year.

The library updates also mean that the Lab will be able to do large-scale updates to the viewer build environment with significantly greater ease in the future. One of the first of these updates liable to come in the first quarter of 2017, to switch to Xcode 8 (Mac) and Visual Studio 2015 (Windows).

Bento

There was no Bento User Group meeting on November 4th, so there is nothing major to report on that front – except those who have been fascinated and charmed by Medhue Simoni’s magnificent Bento elephant can now obtain it via the Marketplace. There’s also an extensive video on it – and it even flies! How cute is that?

Note, obviously, that you will need a Bento capable viewer to use it, and others will require Bento capable viewers to render it correctly.

The next Bento User Group meeting will be on Thursday, November 10th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle.

Interesting Nugget

During the meeting Sansar is discussed, and Oz Linden indicates that the log-in data the Lab receives suggests than a large number of Second Life users are using systems which are unlikely to be able to run Sansar particularly well, further boosting the Lab’s confidence that Second Life has a longer-term future.

This shouldn’t be taken to mean that Sansar will necessarily have a massively high set of system requirements – although obviously, anyone wishing to use the current generation of HMDs will need to have a system meeting the specifications required by such hardware.

Rather, it would again suggest than many Second Life users continue to access Second Life using systems which might be described as past their prime when compared to even the “modest”  hardware standards set by modern home computers.

Summers Wind – blog post

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, October 21st. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update, and references to it are indicated through the use of time stamps in the paragraphs below. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

Server Deployment Recap

• On Tuesday, October 18th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the server maintenance package previously deployed to the 3 RC channels, comprising the new Experience Key scripted sitting. Details: Google overview; wiki page.
• On Wednesday, October 19th, the three RC channels were all be updated with the same new server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator changes and a fix for (non-public) BUG-37758 “OBJECT_REZZER_KEY returns creator key of root key with all in-world copied objects instead of the agent who copied it.”

SL Viewer Status

[02:35] On Thursday October 20th, the current RC viewers were both updated for parity with the release viewer:

• Project Bento  RC (avatar skeleton extensions), updated to version 5.0.0.320815
• Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 4.1.2.320804

As per my Bento update #31, there are still issues being addressed within that viewer, which some affecting existing content on the grid, which the Lab is gradually addressing.

There is no “release date” for Bento, as with all of the RC viewers, it will remain in the viewer release channel until such time as the Lab feel confident in promoting to release, something dependent on a number of factors (crash rates, remaining issues, other viewers in the release channel, etc). However, the hope is it could reach release status be US Thanksgiving.

So, if you are a mesh avatar / accessories content maker, and you haven’t tested for issues with your content on the Bento viewer (e.g. possible deformations of avatars) – now is the time to install the viewer and test your products and JIRA issues; this is especially true of rigged mesh. If issues aren’t reported, the Lab cannot investigate them.

64-Bit Viewer

[04:46] Work on the 64-bit versions of the viewer is progressing, and they should be appearing “soon”. [11:15] More than half of the required libraries are now built ready for the new build process, out of a total of around 50. When available, the plan remains to offer the viewer on Windows as 32-bit and 64-bit, and on Mac OSX and Linux as 64-bit only.

Snapshot Viewer

[06:50] As I’ve previously reported, the Lab is working on a 360-degree photosphere capability built into the viewer. The initial test version of this viewer is progressing and may be appearing in the next week.

It works by capturing 6 images (zenith+ 4×90-degree wide images around the horizon + nadir), which are saved to your hard drive as a .ZIP file, together with a JSON file. [23:46] When issued, the viewer will be an extremely “first cut” version which will have flaws in it, but the idea is to get it in front of the community and work with the community to make the capability something useful to everyone.

I’ll have more on this, hopefully in week #43, once I’ve been able to play with it.

The viewer also includes some contributed capabilities, some of which appear to break snapshots under certain conditions – see BUG-40745.

Linux

[13:12-22:00] For some time now, the Lab has backed away from active support of Linux, and has sought third-party support for Linux maintenance.

During the TPVD meeting, Oz floated the idea that in order to make Linux support somewhat easier, would be to stop providing an integrated binary, distributed as a TAR file with links to all the required Linux libraries maintained by the Lab directly (some of which are broken or have odd requirements). Instead, the Lab would focus on providing the means to build the viewer specific to one version of Debian Linux, then distribute that package, but not distribute or build all the various dependencies required for the viewer, and instead leave these to TPVs to provide as a part of their Linux platform.

This is seen as beneficial, as it would remove many of the idiosyncrasies involved in building the Linux viewer, and eliminate the overhead of having to build and maintain multiple libraries associated with the viewer, transitioning the build process back towards a more “Debian like” means of providing a basic viewer package.

The downside is, the work would initially require a lot of input and upstream contributions from open-source developers. However, Oz indicated that if sufficient interest is show, the Lab would – other priorities allowing – be willing to work with the viewer community to put such a mechanism for Linux builds in place, providing it doesn’t result in changes with break the Windows or Mac viewer build process or result in a functionally different viewer.

Other Items

Voice Updates

[05:03] The voice updates are awaiting an issue resolution following testing between the Lab and Vivox. These updates will include support for a new codec, includes better error handling and addresses some of the more serious Voice exploits to make it “much, much” harder for Voice to be abused. The latter is seen as a “step on the path” to a larger solution for Voice exploit issues.

Inventory UI

[08:00] The Lab is interested in receiving recommendations on how to improve the inventory UI in the viewer. However, such recommendations should be “well-considered and carefully described”, and which should preferably include implementations of the ideas stated in the recommendation, or at least screen shots (captured using the official viewer) and clear descriptions of the recommendation.

Such ideas may then be included in the upcoming round of work the Lab is planning with regards to eliminating more of the common inventory problems people can experience, and make inventory handling more robust. As such, ideas that are simply cosmetic in nature (e.g. ideas for different inventory icons, etc.), are unlikely to be seen as high priority.

Viewer Code Clean-Up

[25:02] An under-the-hood project with the viewer is to clean-up a lot of the code. Some of this work in the current Maintenance viewer, with further work still being carried out. Among other things, it is hoped that these changes will reduce things like shut-down crashes and other issues, as the are released into the viewer.

General Chit-Chat

[29:58-end] There is a general discussion session covering assorted topics, including:

• The fix so that people banned from a group are booted from an active group chat, although ejecting them from the group will not kick them from any active group chat; so ejecting then banning can fail, although the Lab will likely examine this
• The windows version detection issue and  Intel HD2000 and HD3000 graphics, which can cause severe issues for users. This is apparently an Intel OpenGL implementation failing to recognise Win 10, but one solution the Lab is considering is have the 32-bit version of their Windows viewer won’t opt-in to the Win 10 features, and thus avoid the issue for 32-bit users.

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, September 23rd. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update, and references to it are indicated through the use of time stamps in the paragraphs below. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is not intended to be a transcript of the entire meeting, which featured discussions of some situations specific to individual region rather than SL as a whole. However, key discussion points have hopefully been highlighted.

Server Deployment

There was no update on the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, September 20th. On Wednesday, September 21st, all three RC channels should receive the same new server maintenance package, containing further “minor internal changes”.

SL Viewer

VLC and Project Bento RC Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, September 20th The VLC media plug-in viewer updated to version 4.1.1.319856, while the Project Bento RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.319893 on Thursday, September 22nd. In both cases, the updates were primarily intended to bring the viewers to parity with the de facto release viewer code base.

It is hopes the VLC media plug-in viewer will be promoted to the de facto release status in week #39 (week commencing Monday, September 26th).

64-bit Versions

Clarifications was given at the TPV meeting that the 64-bit version of the official viewer will be Windows, Mac and Linux, with the 32-bit version of windows continuing, Mac and Linux moving purely to 64-bit. Active development of the 64-bit viewer is expected to resume in week #39, with the intention of getting the viewer out and available sooner rather than later.

Autobuild, Public Sources and Viewer Building

Part of the 64-bit viewer work involves viewer build infrastructure changes. These include updates to how public sources should be built and to the viewer Autobuild process. In particular, these updates allow the viewer library files to all be built using the same compiler switches regardless of build system. The wiki documentation for viewer builds will be updated to reflect these changes, and there may be a presentation on things at the next TPV Developer meeting. There is a separate file for controlling the compiler switches, so if TPVs and self-compilers wish to build their viewer with different compiler settings, they can swap this file with their own.

Viewer Blocking

As per the Lab’s recent blog post, all official viewer versions older than 4.0.5 have been blocked from accessing Second Life. Users on such viewers will be required to update their viewer to a more recent version. This has been done to encourage users to keep up with the numerous changes and improvements being made to the viewer.

That same blog post indicated that the Lab are discontinuing support for Windows Vista and for Mac OSX versions below 10.9. The Lab is doings its best to maintain back compatibility wherever it can, but where the underlying technology loses support, etc., then it is not possible for the Lab to continue maintaining support either (the more recent versions of CEF, for example, do not work on Windows Vista).

Crash Rates

The recent changes to the viewer code are said to be significantly reducing the crash rate for the official viewer, and it is hoped this will continue with further improvements to the code and through the coming availability of 64-bit versions of the viewer.

Maintenance RC

The next Maintenance RC viewer could be appearing in the early part of week #39.

Avatar and Object Rendering Investigations

[12:12] Vir Linden is starting to work on a new project (concurrent with Bento) involving digging into avatar and object rendering, and land impact. The work is due to an accumulation of issues raised concerning rendering costs by users, and the investigations at this point are focused on what might be improved and what cannot be (due to issues like backwards compatibility) .

This will involve taking “a bunch” of representative / problem cases, and try to take a set of carefully defined measurements of what the real impact is during rendering on a wide range of systems. It is hoped this will allow the Lab to adjust the formulas used to make a reasonable generalisation in the rendering cost of things, and whether or not objects are being reasonably accounted for in those calculations.  At this point in time, it is not a given that anything will chance – simply because it has been a long while since the Lab took a similar “deep dive” into rendering, but there is a “good possibility” changes will result from the investigations.

Avatar Rendering Calculations

[14:54] Avatar rendering calculations were expanded upon by Oz in terms of what happens now, and what the intent was behind things.

The viewer, providing it is using LL’s code unchanged, sends to the simulator a report on what it believes is the rendering cost of all the avatars it can “see” in a region.  The simulator then averages the reports from the various viewers, with heuristics to remove excessive values at either end of the scale, back to everyone in the region.

Right now, the viewer decides how to render each avatar it its view purely on its own per-avatar calculation, using the full dataset for each avatar. However, by using the average value calculated by the simulator, it should be possible for the viewer to start making decisions on whether or not to render avatars in a field of view based on that average (compared with its own Max Complexity setting), without having to wait for the full data on each avatar to be received. The viewer-side code to allow this has yet to be written and implemented, but may form a future project.

[18:34] The other aspect of avatar complexity calculations is that the viewer sends to the simulator a single bit of information for each avatar it can “see”, on whether or not the avatar is rendered as a Jelly Doll. The Simulator then counts how many viewers are reporting on each avatar, and how many of those are rendering that avatar as a Jelly Doll. This information fed back to that avatar roughly once a minute to generate the pop-up notification we see in the top right corner of the viewer window.

Due to the nature of the system, the updates can be delayed, or include out-of-date information. For example: data on avatars who have left a region isn’t immediately discarded by the viewer, but is held for a certain amount of time. Similarly, when changing outfits, you get an immediate update on your complexity (as it is a local calculation), but the number of those who are not rendering you fully is delayed by around 90 seconds while your updated appearance is sent to other viewers and they respond to the simulator with their information on whether they are rendering you fully or as a Jelly Doll, and the simulator feeds that information back to you.

Complexity Variances

[25:15] As noted in my Avatar Complexity updates, the complexity value assigned to an avatar can differ by up to 2K in value between those looking at the avatar. There are a number of reasons for this, including differences in the rendering capabilities of the systems viewing an avatar, and level of detail seen / distance. While it is not a high priority, the Lab is considering tuning how complexity is calculated (such as removing the LOD / distance factors from the calculations).

There are two significant bug reports for issues with the current viewer-side avatar complexity calculations:

•  BUG-37642 – an avatars complexity value can double or triple following a teleport or relog without changing its outfit. This appears to be triggered by certain outfits / attachments.
• BUG-37631 – wearing a rigged mesh with any amount of transparency applied to it results in a 4 times higher complexity value. This appears to be due to x4 multiplier used in the Mesh/Rendering Weight calculation for an alpha being applied to the entire avatar complexity calculation, rather than just the vertices using the transparency.

BUG-37692 – llRezObject() and llRezAtRoot()

[39:30]  BUG-37692 has been raised at a number of recent UG meetings, and is seen to be causing a wide range of issues, notably for weapon systems used in combat environments.  The Lab does not currently have a response for the issue, which will be looked at during the next triage period, on Monday, September 26th.

 

Yasminia – blog post

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, September 9th. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update, and references to it are indicated through the use of time stamps in the paragraphs below. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is not intended to be a transcript of the entire meeting, which featured discussions of some situations specific to individual region rather than SL as a whole. However, key discussion points have hopefully been highlighted.

Server Deployments

There was no main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, September 6th.  On Wednesday, September 7th, all three RCs received the same new server maintenance package, defined as containing “minor internal logging changes” which may help with some of the problems occasionally seen with estate bans; at a minimum the Lab will be able to gather more information on them.

SL Viewer

VLC Media Plugin RC

[00:12] It is anticipated that this viewer (version 4.1.1.318504, dated August 15th at the time of writing) will be updated in the early part of week #37. The update had been expected in week #36, but bug fixing slowed progress. In addition, the new version of the viewer will include changes for exception handling in the viewer intended to ensure exceptions are better handled and recorded. These may not prevent crashes occurring, but should provide the Lab with better data on the exception throws and catches. Overall, they are describes as “fairly small, widespread changes” to the viewer code.

Visual Outfits Browser

[01:26]  The Visual Outfits Browser release candidate was further updated on Friday, September 9th, to version 4.0.8.319463,which should address some bugs, and the crash rate will be under observation with this update.

64-Bit Viewers

[03:08] Progressing continuing on the 64-bit Mac and Windows viewers, and the hope is that a project viewer will be arriving “soon”.

Project Bento

[01:26] My update on the most recent user group meeting is available, in which the viewer’s progress to RC in discussed. At the TPVD meeting, Oz indicated a hope the RC version of the viewer will be appearing some time in the next fortnight. This means that the Bento code will then be officially available for TPVs to adopt.

Windows 10 OpenGL Issue

[03:48] On September 6th, and following Whirly Fizzle’s pointer, I blogged about the Windows 10 / OpenGL issue which is affecting some Second Life users (as well as affecting a number of OpenGL games) – see also BUG-37795. Commenting on this at the TPVD meeting, Oz Linden said:

We are trying to work with Microsoft to find out what the genesis of that problem is … we didn’t do anything, so I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to fix it without help. The fact that it’s not just us that’s affected, is our best hope for getting a fix.

Voice Fixes

[04:50] The Voice changes mentioned in recent TPV Development meetings are not yet ready for release. There is at least one bug in handling Voice fade with distance which needs to be addressed by Vivox, which may take time for them to do. There is also no immediate push to deploy the new server-side Voice code currently on Aditi to the main grid. These changes don’t add any new features, being geared more for future changes to Voice than dealing with current problems, and as such may not be deployed until there is need for them.

New Family of LSL Functions

[07:27] A new family of LSL functions which it is hoped will please scripters. No details on what these are has been provided, pending final QA and testing via Aditi, so they may be appearing “real soon now”.  It is anticipated that an official blog post will mark the availability of the functions.

Other Items

• [13:10] Alpha Masking Issues: This is a long-standing issue whereby alpha masking “fails” when ALM isn’t enabled in the viewer, leading to unattractive visual issues – see BUG-4357 for details.  This is something which fell off of the Lab’s radar, but they will now see if they can assign someone to look at the problem.

• [14:44] Increasing the number of allowed attachments: project Bento sees an increase in the number of allowed attachment points on the avatar skeleton. However, the maximum number of attachments which can be worn at any one time remains 38, as any higher number starts to impact performance and stability, particularly with region crossings
• [20:34] Ghosted attachments on region crossings: there are a number of bug reports on this (e.g. BUG-7761), and more than one bug may be at work (one causing items to become ghosted another causing them to revert, etc) on a region crossing (physical or teleport), which may or may not be linked to wearing multiple individual attachments at the same attach point. The Lab will be making further efforts to investigate issues
• [27:00] E-mail changes: the Lab is making a series of change to improve the handling of outgoing e-mails from their systems (e.g. off-line e-mails for IMs, etc). The first of this is improving how users verify their e-mail address, which will be followed by further improvements, including only sending e-mails to addresses which have been verified. These changes will again be blogged about when implemented
• Suppressing Avatar Complexity Notifications: the Lab may be looking at an easier way to suppress the avatar complexity notifications displayed in the top right corner of the viewer window than by using a debug option.